Designing for Food
Everything food touches was designed by someone.
The plate it arrives on, the flask the oil pours from, the saj the bread comes off. This conversation is about the people who do that work and how they do it: where an idea begins, what you keep of an inherited object and what you redraw, who actually makes the thing, and what food asks of the people who design for it.
Caroline Petit-Mason of Saints Pères modernized Paris porcelain, the city's ivory-tinted tableware, in a style of her own. Miriam Tarabay of Studio Tuut launched her practice in Lebanon at 22 with a mini saj, and works with the coppersmiths and woodturners who keep the objects of the Bilad Al Sham kitchen in daily use. Each of them takes something inherited and makes it current, and this conversation follows that work from the first idea all the way to the table.
Miriam Tarabay bio
Miriam Tarabay is a Lebanese product and industrial designer and the founder of Studio Tuut, an award-winning design studio based in Beirut. She graduated top of her class in Product Design from the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA), earning two academic scholarships, before pursuing a Master’s degree in Design Engineering and Innovation at Politecnico di Milano.
Her practice explores the intersection of cultural heritage, contemporary living, and everyday experiences. Drawing on local traditions, material experimentation, and craftsmanship, she develops thoughtful, functional objects that reinterpret familiar practices for new contexts. Through her work, Miriam seeks to preserve cultural knowledge while making it accessible and relevant to contemporary life.
In 2025, she won the We Design Beirut × VCA award for “Mini Jirn”, a contemporary reinterpretation of traditional Lebanese kibbeh-making tools. She previously co-led the Emerging Designers Exhibition at the second edition of We Design Beirut, contributing to a platform that supports and showcases emerging design talent. Her work has also received recognition through HORECA Lebanon’s Love Local Award and international design platforms, including Isola Design Festival.
Caroline Petit-Mason
Caroline Petit-Mason is a French creative entrepreneur and the founder and creative director of Saints Pères, a Paris-based tableware brand bringing porcelain heritage into the present through contemporary design and unexpected experiences.
After a career in strategic planning in New York, she launched her own design studio in Paris, collaborating with leading names across fashion, beauty and hospitality, as well as Michelin-starred chefs.
More recently, she created Extra Virgin Bar, a food and design concept conceived as a new way to experience porcelain : pairing it with one of the most essential and desirable products of the table: exceptional olive oil. The concept brings together tasting, objects and experience, and was recognised with two D&AD Pencils for Brand Transformation and Brand Experience, as well as a Cannes Lions shortlist for Retail & Customer Experience.
Now based in Dubai, Caroline is expanding her creative practice across the region, creating unexpected experiences at the intersection of food, objects, art and hospitality.